Hi Alexis, that’s a question with a long answer! The short answer is that the Swiss were far better at adopting mass-production in watch manufacture. They also had invested so heavily in the industry that when the watch industry collapsed elsewhere in the world after the emergence of the electronic watch, they were stubbourn and persisted on. Most watch companies went bust and were bought up cheapily by conglomorates like Swatch or the Richemont Group. Then the mechanical watch came back into fashion and the industry started to grow again. By this stage is was only the Swiss left, so they were the monopoly by default.